Murrieta, CA—On Friday, August 8, 2025, Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed its opening brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of four California moms and their families fighting to restore religious exemptions to the state’s vaccination law. Since 1961, California had allowed exemptions for personal beliefs—including religious objections. But in 2016, the State nixed all personal belief exemptions, which they knew to also include any and all religious exemptions. The State’s vaccine law, SB 277, still allows exemptions for secular reasons though. The State allows students with a medical exemption, students who are over 18-years-old, students with IEPs (individualized education plans), students with certain social statuses like homelessness, military families, and in foster care, and students transferring schools to be exempt or to enjoy periods of exemption from the law’s requirements. Yet even though the State allows numerous secular exemptions, it refused to allow a religious exemption to the small number of families who seek to exempt their children based on religious reasons. Religious families who object to the vaccines required under SB 277 have to choose: follow their sincerely held religious beliefs or forego admissibility to all private and public schools for their children in the State of California.
“Advocates for Faith & Freedom’s brief highlights what is an important point of fairness but also an important principle of constitutional law: before the State is allowed to ban schoolchildren from all public and private schools in California, it must demonstrate that doing so is necessary. It is hard to prove necessity to single out religious exemptions for extinction, however, when the State allows so many secular exemptions which seemingly pose the same harm.” said Erin Mersino, Vice President of Advocates for Faith and Freedom.
“Our First Amendment liberties must be protected with vigilance,” added Robert Tyler, President and Chief Counsel of Advocates for Faith & Freedom. “We are honored to take this fight to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of our courageous clients.”
Advocates for Faith & Freedom’s Opening Brief is available here:
Advocates for Faith & Freedom is a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting constitutional and religious liberty in the courts. Our mission is to engage in cases that will uphold our religious liberty and America’s heritage and to educate Americans about our fundamental constitutional rights.
